trans_9 | Being For the Benefit of Miss Redfield-Kennedy

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Being For the Benefit of Miss Redfield-Kennedy

After being trapped in a mistletoe force field with Vega, and her subsequent rescue by her father, Sherry retreated into her room to study. Just like she'd intended to do in the beginning. Her hairband sat next to her on the bed and she kept playing with her lengthening hair as she read. Every once in a while her brow would furrow as she memorized a difficult problem, or her lips would move as she mouthed a sentence or passage.

Chemistry was kind of fun, though when she saw something that she clearly remembered not being on the periodic table, she had to stop, read it, read it again, and try to fit it in. That was the real problem with people from all over: science not fitting where it was supposed to.

But that wasn't science's fault, now was it?

Sherry pulled her eyes away from her screen and looked at her mother's bed. She knew she couldn't be rightnext to Claire all the time, but she hadn't seen her mother in a few hours (at least this time, Sherry was fairly sure she wasn't missing somewhere with her father - Leon had to work), and wondered just what Claire was up to. For a moment, she pondered asking her mother what she was doing with her day, and when were they eating dinner.

What did she have to study next?

Oh. Right. English. Bleh. She looked for the lesson and groaned. She already spoke English, and spoke it very well, if she said so herself. So why did they insist on teaching it for years and years? It was just the same thing over and over. Adjectives, nouns, prepositional phrases...!

Still... "Infinitive Phrases," she started aloud. "An infinitive phrase is what you get by combining an infinitive with an object. Pfft. It may be used as a noun, adjective or adverb. Boring." Sherry read the examples and frowned "...Why would a person's secret desire be nuzzling flagpoles? How do you even nuzzle one?" she questioned the empty room.

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They probably should've waited until they actually got in the room, and made sure it was clear first. But, really, its all Claire's fault, as far as Leon was concerned. She had to go be a smartass, and had to make that cute face she made when she knew she was to win the latest verbal exchange between them, and he couldn't think of a comeback (really, the cute face was distracting), so he kissed her.

And kept kissing her.

And was still kissing her now, while the pair stumbled out of the hall and into her room. You'd think Leon's ninja senses would pick up on the fact that they weren't alone, but he was really focused on Claire and not much else at the moment.

Before she could figure out the answer to her question (as rhetorical as it was), the door opened and Sherry turned to greet her mother, "Hi, Mom, could you hel--"

The rest of the sentence was cut off in a horrified sort of shocked burble.

Her parents were kissing.

Her parents were kissing. And kissing a lot.

Wait. What. What!? Eww! Sherry sat there in opened-mouthed shock, her eyes the size of saucers.

Claire probably should've thought of Sherry possibly being in the room; they did share it, after all. But for some reason, whenever Leon kissed her, most rational thought seemed to go flying out the window.

She was in the process of blindly pulling Leon towards her bed without actually breaking away from him when Sherry's voice registered. Her eyes snapped open and while she broke away from Leon she didn't completely detangle from him, looking over at Sherry with a surprised (and a little embarrassed) look on her face.

"H-hi, sweetie," she choked out while attempting to force herself to be composed.

Leon sort of froze for a moment when he heard Sherry's voice. She was not supposed to be there. He gave Claire a kind of 'oh crap, what now?' look, though he didn't really untangle from her either.

He ended up following Claire's lead on this, sort of, and gave Sherry a small wave.

"Hey, sweetheart."

Sherry waved back, the movement slow and somewhat mechanical. "...Er..." She started, and stopped, trying to make her tone sound more annoyed than it actually was (which, by the by, wasn't working). She pointed at them mutely, and tried the talking thing again.

"What.... that... what...?" Sherry's surprised look hadn't faded an iota as her brain tried to put things together. But considering she was twelve, her brain just kept unhelpfully providing, Ew! and What!? in a variety of tones.

She shot a look at Leon, trying to figure out how exactly they were going to explain this. Sherry looked completely shocked, and Claire couldn't really blame her. This wasn't really what she'd had in mind for when they were planning to tell Sherry about "them" but things didn't always go as planned. Clearing her throat, Claire broke away from Leon enough so it wasn't awkward to look at Sherry and smiled sheepishly.

"Um, Sherry. We've got something to tell you."

Leon was lost as to how to handle this, his expression basically saying as much when he looked at Claire.

"Yeah. We've been meaning to tell you this for a while. Uh..." Leon was going to take a moment to figure out how to phrase it. Because saying 'mommy and daddy are banging each other' would just be wrong. In the meantime, Claire, if you want to take this...

Claire glanced at Leon again, a perplexed look crossing her face for a moment. They really should've talked about this a little more before it had gotten to this point. Oh well. Turning back to Sherry, Claire exhaled, rolling her shoulders back.

"We're dating." There was no actual point to drag it out, and really that summed it up and would hopefully snap Sherry out of the wide-eyed state she was sitting in.

The brakes on Sherry's already wildly-out-of-sync mind came on and brought the rest of her thought processes to a screeching halt.

Dating. Her widened eyes closed and her little mouth came shut with a quiet click of teeth. Dating. This was good, right? A girl's parents were supposed to be together, so it had to be good. Still, even amidst all her thoughts of somewhat excitement, something swam to the surface and flew out of her mouth, her tone innocent and confused. "You don't date."

Really, she'd been thrown for such a loop that she sort of wanted to laugh at herself. "Er... I mean...!"

Leon wasn't entirely sure how to take that. He looked back at Claire, then at Sherry again.

"We're dating now. Trust us on that."

She nodded her head, glancing over at Leon again briefly and sliding her hand through his.

"It's still pretty new, but we realized we liked each other as a lot more than just friends." Sherry still seemed a little confused, so Claire was attempting to clear things up a little.

"Oh." Sherry nodded. You could almost hear puzzle pieces clicking into place, as she added absently,"So, I guess I should tell Yuri to not to try and trip you into Dad, huh?"

Realizing what she'd said, Sherry flailed her arms, and launched herself off the bed at her parents. "Um, ignore what I said, please." Because really, the kidlets weren't trying to push Claire and Leon together.

Really.

Why don't you look like you believe her?

Claire probably shouldn't laugh at that, but she couldn't stifle a snort as she shook her head slightly and crouched down to hook one arm around Sherry's waist.

"You can tell Yuri that she should let people figure out how they feel on their own." Even if they were incredibly thick-headed about romance like Claire was.

Sherry raised her eyebrows, and put her arms around Claire's shoulders, "I could tell her, but she probably wouldn't listen." Oh! But, Yuri owed her for the whole Vega/Mistletoe Force Field business, so maybe she would.

Maybe.

Sherry doubted it. "So... is this why you two have been acting weird lately?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "We... it took some time for us to figure everything out." And oh lord had there been AWKWARD along the way. "Relationships are a lot more complicated than simply tripping and falling into each other."

"Yeah, and if I tripped into Leon he'd probably just make a comment about my big feet and then I'd have to hit him, so it wouldn't have really worked." Claire smirked at Sherry, giving her a quick wink before tilting her head forward a little.

"Are you cool with this?"

Sherry nodded and grinned slightly, "Mmhmm. I'm fine with it." And she was, too, now that her mind had stopped trumpeting Eww! and Gross! at her. (Well, it still was, but Sherry was stonewalling it into submission.)

"Does... this mean you'll be changing rooms, Mom?"

Claire blinked at that before quickly shaking her head.

"No way." She almost asked why Sherry would think that before deciding against it.

Well, that's good. At least they wouldn't be like Kon and... actually, where was Kon? She hadn't seen him in a little while. Sherry shook her head slightly to get back on subject (clearly, she needed to stop listening to Vega and Yuri's hyperactive chattering that jumped from subject-to-subject and sometimes didn't even make sense). "Okay."

There was another reason she'd asked, mostly the dislike of change in her environment (though the change from couch in the Precinct to Bed had been nice), but since Claire was so sure that she'd not be moving, the little girl was sufficiently quelled.

She looked up at Leon and smiled at him, "Should I... go back to studying?" Because you had really interrupted her with your makeouts, O All-Powerful Parents.

Yeah, they weren't going to go straight from friends to living together. And now that that subject had passed, Leon could relax a little.

"Uh... sure." He didn't really see any reason not to let her. "We didn't mean to interrupt you."

"Yeah, sorry sweetie." Claire smiled a little and brushed a hand over Sherry's hair.

"Do you have everything under control?" She figured Sherry was fine, still before running off Claire figured it wouldn't hurt to make sure the schoolwork was going well. That's what parents did, after all.

"Yes, it was only English," Sherry made a face, "and Chemistry. Except the example they were giving for infinitive particles was really stupid. Why would a person have the secret desire to nuzzle a flagpole?"

People were weird and she didn't like them.

...what?

"Let me see this book."

Sherry raised her eyebrows and pushed her bangs from her eyes, "Well, okay. But it's boring." She detatched herself from Claire and tottered over to get her book, open to the page on infinitive phrases she'd been studying. She then handed the book to Leon.

The examples for the nouns read as follows:

To nuzzle flagpoles is her secret desire. (subject)
She longs to nuzzle flagpoles. (direct subject)
Her secret hankering is to nuzzle flagpoles. (subjective complement)
She has no hanker except to nuzzle flagpoles. (object of preposition except)

Sherry looked at her mother, looked at her father, and shrugged. "So?"

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